Sunday, October 9, 2011

Is the occupy wall street movement just the free market in action? An interesting question may seem odd to some because many of the people protesting are against the free market or at least calling for regulation of business and because of that fact the first reaction to that question is no of course the occupy wall street protestor have nothing to do with the free market. But that view would be wrong.

Often the rebuttal to the ideal of regulations is that ultimately it’s not needed because in the end the invisible hand of the free market will regulate the actors in the economy. Examples of this would be things like the ideal that we don’t need something like the FDA or the USDA because if any of the food we eat turns out to be unsafe then people will stop eating it. This ideal moves out to anything else that is or can be regulated, there is no need for the regulating because consumers will reject bad actors in the economy.

In this cause the invisible hand of the free market isn’t acting against a company that is putting out a shoddy product and people refusing to buy it. This time the invisible hand is being moved by the masses who have not been enjoying the fruits of this economy, the people who weren’t allowed to get capital in this capitalist economy. The recent (and not so recent) college grad who can’t find a job. The person who has been working hard at a company for decades only to have their job shipped over seas, etc, etc.

The current economic system is not working for them, in fact some of them are actually being harmed by it. Just as people would stop buying a product they found out is no good or even dangerous, people will also rise up against systems that have turned out to be no good or dangerous to them. History is littered with rulers and nations being over turned by the people because they didn’t feel like they where being treated fairly.

Looking at history there seems to be a breaking point for a certain level of inequality. It’s not that people don’t expect there to be those that are doing better then others in fact I think people find that to be the norm. The problem isn’t that there are the rich and poor, it’s when it comes to a point when people feel that the rich are taking from them (to the point they are getting poorer) to get richer. That’s the point many in America feel today and that is point when people feel the economic system isn’t working for them and rebel against it.

As I see it there are basically two paths that the rich can take when the market gets like this. They can keep going along the same path and take the risk that the people rebelling win and in the act of fixing things to work better for them make the rich suffer or the rich can make some changes and allow the non-rich to earn a decent living and the rich can continue to be wealthy. Logically I think people would go with the later path but right now it seems that people are set to keep on the same path as before, but it’s early and that may change. I believe the reason the later path often doesn’t get chosen is that people either don’t believe they are going to be over turned by the masses or think it’s worth the risk because even thought they will be making money on both paths they will be making more in the first then the second one. Or maybe it’s just a case of those people knowing how to work the current economic system but fear they won’t be able work what comes next and still be wealthy.

Though I guess there are those who really believe in the free market principle and the market means let the people get so angry that they try to change the system let them because that’s is what the market it wants.